HURRICANE Irma is tearing through the Caribbean with the full force of a category 4 hurricane. Here are the latest images of the “major damage” caused by Hurricane Irma.

Hurricane Irma lashed Cuba and the Bahamas as it drove toward Florida on Friday after hitting the eastern Caribbean with its devastatingly high winds, killing 21 people and leaving catastrophic destruction in its wake.

The 11.00 pm EDT update from the NOAA National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the hurricane had again become a category 5 storm, with wind speeds nearing 160mph .

Irma wwas last located just 120 miles (365 km) east from Caibarien in Cuba, and 300 miles (610 km) southeast of Florida.

Hurricane conditions were spreading westward over parts of Cuba and the central Bahamas as the storm skirted near Cuba's northern coast.

As Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, bore down on Florida, Governor Rick Scott starkly warned residents to get out if they were in evacuation zones.

Irma left a trail of "absolute devastation”, destroying houses, snapping trees and killing at least one person as it tore across the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda on Wednesday with 185-mile-per-hour winds.

Prime minister of the two-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, described the island as "barely habitable" after the powerful Category 5 storm struck early on Wednesday.

Aerial footage of the island after Irma had passed through showed a desolate, flooded island with overturned vehicles and scattered debris.

A second hurricane named Jose is forecast to become a major storm and pass close to Antigua and Barbuda on Saturday.

Hurricane Irma: Damage in the Caribbean latest pictures

Sat, September 9, 2017

Hurricane Irma sowed a trail of deadly devastation through the Caribbean

A child walks down a flooded street after hurricane Irma in Monti Cristi, Dominican Republic

GETTY

Tortola suffered catastrophic damage hen Hurricane Irma struck

The island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands suffered catastophic damage when the hurricane struck with homes and businesses destroyed, cars and boats tossed around like toys and trees uprooted.